Art Supply Angst

This is the weekly dispatch from Bizarro Studios North, where I have been writing and drawing the Monday through Saturday Bizarro comics since 2018. My partner and friend Dan Piraro created Bizarro in the late twentieth century and continues to do the Sunday comic from Rancho Bizarro in Mexico.

Wayno

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DON'T PANIC.

Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

And when finally the bottom fell out
I became withdrawn
The only thing I knew how to do
Was to keep on keepin’ on like a bird that flew

Bob Dylan (Tangled Up in Blue)

Your cartoonist's anxiety was slightly elevated recently when I  tried to reorder a supply of my favorite Japanese brush pen and learned that it had been discontinued. They're easy to work with, with a point that's flexible enough for varying line widths, the ink is nice and dark, and they're inexpensive, which is a plus because I use a lot of them. After about a week, the point becomes smooshed and I open up a fresh one. I do keep the older ones for filling in solid black areas.

Fortunately, the manufacturer has another product that seems to use the same ink and has an identical point, with a different barrel. I inked a couple of gags with the new one, and there were no accidents or injuries. The cost is similar to the old standby, so all is well once again.

The quotes from Adams and Dylan come to mind as I recall this brief non-crisis. Every one of them words rang true, indeed.

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Today's pipe pic is another self-portrait by a cartoonist.

Justin Green (1945-2022) introduces the 1972 minicomic "Jud" Green's Underground Cartooning Course.

I was aware of this mini, but don't own a copy. The entire book was recently posted on the Desert Island Comics Instagram page, which is where I snagged this image.

Green was an underground comix pioneer. His groundbreaking Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary virtually created the genre of autobiographical comix, and influenced countless cartoonists, including Robert Crumb, Art Spiegelman, and Bill Griffith.

Green and his wife Carol Tyler, a masterful cartoonist in her own right, are the subjects of the recent documentary, Married to Comics. It's a powerfully honest film, which I highly recommend.

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Now that I've calmed down, let's see the most recent Bizarro gags, which were inked with a trusty Kuretake PK-10S brush pen.

While we realize that lemmings don't actually jump off cliffs en masse, the myth is a useful metaphor for human behavior, including that of a significant minority of the American voting public.

As a person of Italian heritage, I endorse this treatment.

The arboreal equivalent of wearing short pants all year round.

If household pests were that neat in reality, people might not be so quick to hire exterminators.

I felt slightly guilty about cropping out the customer's head, but I was happy with the way I drew the pest control guy's shoes.

My inner coffee snob turns up its nose at espresso in paper cups, but I'll drink one in a cafe without protest. However, I draw the line at taking it to go.

Pulling strings is itself a job requirement.

And that closes out another week of two-dimensional jocularity. Thanks for checking it out.

See you next Saturday with more of this stuff. Remember not to panic, and to keep on keepin' on.

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Bonus Track

Bob Dylan: "On the Road Again"

From Bringing It All Back Home

Columbia Records LP, 1965

Not the Willie Nelson song, "On the Road Again" contains some of Dylan's most hilariously surreal lyrics.

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Visit Our Other Locations

If you like what we do, and appreciate that it comes to you free of charge, we encourage you to explore any or all of the following links. 

Many thanks!

Wayno's Weekly Newsletter

Dan Piraro's Weekly Bizarro Blog

Dan's Tip Jar (One-time or recurring)

Dan "Diego" Piraro's Peyote Cowboy Graphic Novel

Official Bizarro Shop

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Copyright© 2024 by Wayno®  

  

Reboots Are Made For Moshing

This is the weekly dispatch from Bizarro Studios North, where I have been writing and drawing the Monday through Saturday Bizarro comics since 2018. My partner and friend Dan Piraro created Bizarro in the late twentieth century and continues to do the Sunday comic from Rancho Bizarro in Mexico.

Wayno

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Let's all pitch in and do our thing, make a better world to live in.

Earl King (1934-2003)

I'm trying to maintain a positive attitude in this portentous year. It's all too easy to become discouraged and lose hope for the human race. Earl King's song "Let's Make a Better World" was first recorded by Dr. John in 1974, and I've always loved it. For the past few years, my musical group has closed out every performance and rehearsal with our version of the song. Some may find the lyrics to be corny, but King's message about doing what we can to help and support others in our own neighborhood makes a lot of sense, and is an eloquent expansion of the familiar phrase "Think globally, act locally."

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Our pipe pic is a 1967 self-portrait by illustrator/cartoonist Bob Clarke (1926-2013).

Clarke had a long career doing advertising illustration and design work. His most widely seen creation was probably the label for Cutty Sark whisky.

More importantly (to me, anyway), Clarke was a contributor to MAD from 1956 to 2010. I found the self-portrait on my colleague Mike Lynch's excellent blog about cartoon art and the cartooning business. Thanks, Mike!

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Speaking of the cartoon biz, here are the Bizarro gags for the second week of this shiny new year.

This ran the morning after the 2024 Golden Globe Awards, but it was a coincidence rather than planning on my part.

Tuesday's gag was inspired by the peculiar language of real estate.

If this fashion mashup ever comes to be, remember where you saw it first.

The strip layout stumped me until I realized I could get away with cropping the customer at her shoulders.

I said I was trying to maintain a positive outlook, not that I was succeeding at it.

Your cartoonist admits to feeling queasy when drawing Friday's gag, and even worse when coloring it, but I powered through the nausea because I care.

I don't have the data at hand, but I believe I've poked fun at Batman more than any other comic book superhero. I'd guess that Spider-Man would come in a distant second.

And just like that, another week of cartoonery has passed.

Take care of yourselves, and choose your footwear responsibly. See you next Saturday with gags involving lemmings, trees, pasta sauce, mice, cats, and coffee.

Thank you, as always, for your readership and support.

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Bonus Track

The Red Beans & Rice Combo:
"Let's Make a Better World"

From the album Breaking Up the House.

Bonedog Records, 2023

Please excuse the additional hyping of our new CD. We're trying to recover the cost of licensing the songs so they can be distributed legally. If you'd like to help with that effort, you can buy the disc here.

It's also available on all of the usual streaming platforms and is downloadable from Apple Music, Amazon, and other retailers of digital music.

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More Bizarro Stuff

If you like what we do, and appreciate that it comes to you free of charge, we encourage you to explore any or all of the following links. 

Many thanks!

Auction of Prints and Original Piraro Art!

Wayno's Weekly Newsletter (NEW LOCATION!)

Dan Piraro's Weekly Bizarro Blog

Dan's Tip Jar (One-time or recurring)

Dan "Diego" Piraro's Peyote Cowboy Graphic Novel

Official Bizarro Shop

King Features Subscription & Archive Access

Support Your Local Humorist

Copyright© 2024 by Wayno®  

  

Ringing in the New

This is the weekly dispatch from Bizarro Studios North, where I have been writing and drawing the Monday through Saturday Bizarro comics since 2018. My partner and friend Dan Piraro created Bizarro in the late twentieth century and continues to do the Sunday comic from Rancho Bizarro in Mexico.

Wayno

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Civilization cannot last or advance without culture.

Ahmad Jamal (1930-2023)

Happy New Year to you all. Deadlines being what they are, it's now early March on my drawing board, but I did take a little time away from the studio for low-key holiday festivities.

This blog post will be briefer than usual. The platform I've been using for my weekly newsletter is supposed to shut down in late February, but it's already falling apart, so I'm working on launching it on a new, more stable site. There's a bit of a learning curve, but I think it'll be a good move.

Last week I shared a musical selection by the distinguished jazz musician Ahmad Jamal, and today we kick off with a quote from him. We at Bizarro Studios like to think that we contribute to our society's culture, if only in a small way.

In keeping with the theme of "cultcha," our first pipe pic model of the New Year is the late opera star Luciano Pavarotti.

The great tenor inspired a panel in my pre-Bizarro comic, WaynoVision.

Before anyone writes to correct my Italian, I'm aware that the lyric to the famous Neapolitan song is "O sole mio." I took liberties with the spelling in the hope that English-speaking readers would hear the word in their head as having two syllables.

It may have been a mistake, but I was my own editor on that comic. Today, I have wonderful real editors, who I can rely on to help me out with spelling, punctuation, and grammar.

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Now that we've excavated an old cartoon, let's check out more recent work.

He also has difficulty in choosing between hemming and hawing.

Everybody deserves equine justice under the law.

These apex predators have many skills, but disguise isn't one of them.

A few sharp-eyed readers informed me that these characters are wearing the uniform of a Petty Officer Third Class. My photo research was clearly a little sloppy here, but to be fair, "Petty Officer Third Class Crunch" would have crowded the caption box.

Friday's gag depicts a scene from the catering tent on a Sergio Leone film shoot.

Sometimes one can blend in by standing out.

That wraps up our first batch of gags for 2024. Please drop by again next week.

Thank you, as always, for your readership and support.

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Bonus Track

Mose Allison, "You Are My Sunshine"

From the album I've Been Doin' Some Thinkin'

Atlantic Records, 1968

The Italian phrase "o sole mio" translates roughly as "oh, my sun," which reminded me of Mose Allison's unique version of "You Are My Sunshine." 

It's not a bad song to start the year with.

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Alternate Bizarro Sources

If you like what we do, and appreciate that it comes to you free of charge, we encourage you to explore any or all of the following links. 

Many thanks!

Wayno's Weekly Newsletter (NEW LOCATION!)

Dan Piraro's Weekly Bizarro Blog

Dan's Tip Jar (One-time or recurring)

Dan "Diego" Piraro's Peyote Cowboy Graphic Novel

Official Bizarro Shop

King Features Subscription & Archive Access

Support Your Local Humorist

Copyright© 2024 by Wayno®  

  

Twelve More Months of Chucklery

This is the weekly dispatch from Bizarro Studios North, where I have been writing and drawing the Monday through Saturday Bizarro comics since 2018. My partner and friend Dan Piraro created Bizarro in the late twentieth century and continues to do the Sunday comic from Rancho Bizarro in Mexico.

Wayno

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Let us encourage one another with visions of a shared future. And let us bring all the grit and openheartedness and creative spirit we can muster to gather together and build that future.

Norman Lear (1922-2023)

At year's end, it's common to reflect on what one has accomplished (or failed to) in the past twelve months. I'm taking a longer view by noting that today wraps up my sixth year of doing the daily Bizarro comics.

I began working with Dan Piraro in 2009, became a regular gag writer, and two-time guest cartoonist, and served as the feature's colorist between 2011 and 2014. 

Dan invited me to take over the dailies beginning on January 1, 2018, resulting in around 1,879 daily comics so far, and our partnership has been the best work and creative experience I've ever had.

We opened this post with a quote from Norman Lear, who died in early December at the age of 101. It's an optimistic sentiment and one I'll try to hold onto despite the abundance of negative forces bombarding us daily.

The last blog entry of the year also feels like an appropriate time to acknowledge and thank you all for your ongoing support. We don't know what horrors and hardships the New Year will bring, but we at Rancho Bizarro in Mexico and Bizarro Studios North in Hollywood Gardens PA will keep doing our thing to, we hope, provide a few moments of healing laughter now and then.

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Although not identified as such, let's pretend that today's pipe pic is the New Year's baby. If Google Translate can be trusted, he's casting a vote for a French brand of corn starch.

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While we ponder the mysteries of le bébé qui fume la pipe, let's look back at the last cartoons of 2023.

When totaling the Secret Symbols in this gag, I found myself counting the slice of pizza, so if any readers were thrown by it, you weren't alone.

We imagine that the term Boxing Day has a different meaning for recycling crews.

Naturally, the emergency call was placed by the butler.

The private lives of public figures are seldom what one would expect.

Of course, in this context, the character's appearance falls under the umbrella of fair use.

We ended the week with the heartwarming tale of the Littlest Troll.

And that concludes our output for 2023. Visit us next week to check out the first gags of the New Year.

Thank you, as always, for your kind attention.

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Bonus Track

Ahmad Jamal: "Poinciana"

From the album But Not for Me

Argo Records LP, 1958

Ahmad Jamal was born in Pittsburgh in 1930 and died in April of 2023. He played in a tasteful, minimalist style, and Miles Davis was quoted as saying he was impressed by Jamal's rhythmic sense and his "concept of space, his lightness of touch, his understatement."

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Additional Bizarro Outlets

If you like what we do, and appreciate that it comes to you free of charge, we encourage you to explore any or all of the following links. 

Thanks!

Wayno's Bizarro Newsletter (Temporarily Out of Order)

Dan Piraro's Weekly Bizarro Blog

Dan's Tip Jar (One-time or recurring)

Dan "Diego" Piraro's Peyote Cowboy Graphic Novel

Official Bizarro Shop

King Features Subscription & Archive Access

Support Your Local Humorist

Copyright© 2023 by Wayno®